Month: October 2017

It is seriously hard to believe that tomorrow our final documentary is due and this semester of Documentary as Action will come to an end. It has been such a whirlwind journey, and it is amazing to look back now and see how far I have come.

Coming into this semester, I chose this class for the main reason that I could work for a not for profit organisation. I did not know a lot about documentary making or the even the fundamental reasons behind documentary making, and really had no clear idea of what I was hoping to achieve. I spent many of the first weeks desperately trying to work out what it is that I hoped to make, and at some stages thought I would never find my footing. This is one of the many reasons I am so proud of the final product that I have been able to create with Matt for Good Shepherd, though there are many other reasons.

I am very proud to say that I have been able to help create something for an organisation that did not have the funding or resources to make it on their own. All documentary has a purpose, and I strongly believe ours was made to make sure many more women and children engage with Good Shepherd and get the support that they need.

In terms of my own personal development, I am so proud of the actual final product I have made, and all of the challenges I have been able to overcome. Before this class, I had never made documentary. Now I am able to say that I was able to create a piece with a real organisation. I learnt how to tell the delicate stories of these women ethically, which was one of the biggest things I hoped to achieve. I learnt how to communicate with these women, how to actually go into their space and shoot something with a schedule in mind. I even moved away from my beloved iMovie this semester and gave Premiere Pro a go, and was successfully able, despite many moments of anger, to create a four minute piece that I am proud of.

I believe, from my experience in this class, that documentary’s main purpose is to start some kind of action. It has the power to create change, and impact someone, even if it is just one person. I hope that in the long run my documentary is able to target women in need and help them to reach out to Good Shepherd for help, but even seeing the effect it has had on the women in the class in terms of their confidence is enough for me!

The time has come around once more for Matt and myself to show some of our work in progress in class. In our last viewing, we showed a short clip we had made of the Sew Much More sewing teacher Wendy and the interview we had completed with her. While we did get some good feedback from the class, one big question that came up was surrounding how we actually planned to start and finish the documentary. The introduction and conclusion of a documentary are very important to the piece, as it is what hooks the audience and what the audience is left to think about.

This is why, for our second work in progress, some of the main feedback we asked for surrounded the beginning and ending of the piece. This time we did not show the piece surrounding Wendy, instead deciding to show the piece we had started to construct about the actual women completing the class. We had put in the graduation scene at the beginning with some voice over of the women, and tied it up in a similar way. We were interested in hearing from the class how this worked in their opinion, as they had no idea who the women were or the story behind the documentary, so we felt they would have a pretty good idea about whether or not the beginning and ending actually made sense and whether they felt it worked. We understood that this feedback may be hard to give in some ways, as much of the middle of the piece was still missing, and it was hard to tell how the start and end sequence would fit without the rest, however we hoped the class would be able to see enough to give us some helpful feedback anyway.

We also wished for some further feedback on the content itself and how it was structured. Structure was something that Matt and myself had struggled with through the editing process, so once again hearing more about how the flow seemed and whether it made sense was also important for us. The editing was a little rough, which was something that we were already aware of, however, gaining some further feedback on how we could improve it was something that Matt in particular was hoping to hear as well.

The feedback we received once again from the class was quite good. A lot of people seemed to react well to the documentary that we had put forward and the actual content within it. Many people suggested that we move the graduation footage to the end of the piece, as that would be a nice way to conclude, however, also suggested that we leave some of the interview voice over that we had at the start as the emotion worked quite well.

We also gained some feedback on the b-roll footage currently in our documentary. As our cut was super rough, the b-roll we had was very limited, placed in mostly to give an idea of what it would look like when we finished. Watching it ourselves in class, it was easy to see that the talking heads were getting quite boring and that some b-roll was definitely needed to make it more intriguing. Something else that came up during the feedback was lack of music. As we showed the introduction and conclusion to the piece in class, we knew this would come up, as these are two areas of the piece where emotion is quite high, and music is necessary to match it, while also needed to drag the audience in.

Going forward, we hope to play around a little more with the structure and the beginning and ending of the piece to find something that works. As suggested in class, we may take some pieces out of our current beginning and move it to the end, and add some different footage at the beginning to fit with our voice over. Watching our documentary once more and pin pointing the moments where music and b-roll would be a good fit will also be one of the next steps, to ensure we don’t simply have a documentary full of boring talking heads. We will try to play a number of tracks over our documentary to see exactly what works before we place it into the documentary in the end.

I am very excited about where we are headed with this documentary. The fact that people seemed to take to it quite well in class makes me feel much more confident, and with the advice received from our peers, we should be able to create something emotional that has a well rounded structure and keeps the audience hooked from start to finish!

This week was Grand Final week, and while i’m not sure how I feel about the final result on the final Saturday in September, I was very glad for the break on Friday. This break on Friday did mean we did not have a class, so our only actual class time was on Monday.

On Monday we spent a lot of time focussing on music and how it can be used in documentary. We watched some examples and it was good to hear of some of the websites we can use to source some songs that are free to use. I have begun to look at some of the websites, however, I do really want to cut the documentary first to try and see exactly when the music is necessary. I find that watching something makes it much easier to work out when music needs to be used, whether it’s to heighten the emotion or highlight a certain thing happening in the documentary.

The rest of the week has been used to sort through the footage and work out exactly where we should start and how our documentaries should be sequenced. I have tried to focus my attention on working out exactly how to start the documentary. The feedback we received on our last feedback piece was that we needed to choose a piece of footage or a part of the interview with heightened emotions to start off with to immediately hook the audience. For our major piece, we are hoping to create something that surrounds the women and their experience. During our final filming session at Good Shepherd, we filmed the women receiving their certificates, signifying the final day of their class. While logically this may seem like something that could round out the documentary, I also like the thought of using it at the beginning due to the emotional element it would bring, as well as the way the sewing class and women are all introduced together.

My current idea is to use the footage of the women receiving their certificates as mostly b-roll, muting it and overlaying it with the responses each women gave to the question ‘how do you feel about the sewing class coming to an end’. This could also work well at the ending of the piece, however it is a nice emotional piece that could be used as an introduction. We will work on cutting this footage together and potentially gaining some feedback on how it fits with the structure of the piece.